Regarding 'Benetto Cruce':does anyone beleive that "all history is fiction and that all fiction is history"?

Answer 1

LOL...interesting...and in its own way, so very true!
History is written by the victor, so in a way it is fiction, if only because the real stories are warped by the person who wrote it with whatever agenda he had in mind.
Take the history of Rome.... we learn that Rome was a great cvilization, that it was artistic, had law, etc. But, if you look into the history of the areas that Rome conquered, and read what their historians wrote, you see Rome as a villain, cruel, debauched, rotting.
Who do you believe? All of them......fiction, on top of fiction, hiding truth behind it.

Answer 2

No, not as stated
I do believe, however, that much fictional creation can give an insight into a more fundamental level of historical reality. For example, Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE, or Kenneally's SCHINDLER'S LIST and CONFEDERATES (his American civil war novel), or the insights on cultural history and art which Irving Stone used in his novels on art.. I read an article a few years ago, in THE WRITER, based on interviews with an American historian (mainly of the revolutionary period) who also wrote historical fiction and who explained that he could best explore aspects of reality (e.g., his sense of the consciousness of some of his historical characters) by retracing the same events as fiction.

But I am fundamentally opposed to the relativistic and revisiionist views that could be reduced to the statement that "all history is fiction" (notwithstanding that, as E. H. Carr argued, that it is important to ask the question of any historian "Where is he/she coming from?"

By the way, the author you cite is "Benedetto Croce", an Italian idealist philosopher, philosopher of history and noted liberal. Wikipedia does a good summary of his life and ideas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedetto_Croce